Panic buying empties many shelves

Hand sanitisers and detergents are flying off the shelves at stores around South Africa, but the Minister of Health says ‘just soap and water is safer and more available’. Thobile Mathonsi African News Agency (ANA)

Hand sanitisers and detergents are flying off the shelves at stores around South Africa, but the Minister of Health says ‘just soap and water is safer and more available’. Thobile Mathonsi African News Agency (ANA)

Published Mar 11, 2020

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Durban - As the global number of Covid-19 cases surpasses the 110000 mark and mass panic both internationally and locally to curb the spread of the virus mounts, businesses have risen to the occasion, as supply and demand come into play.

The demand for supplies such as gloves, hand sanitisers and surgical masks is rocketing and these businesses will benefit from the outbreak.

By Friday last week, hand sanitisers, hand wipes and liquid hand soap were sold out at major retailers such as Dis-chem, Clicks and Shoprite.

In South Africa, on average, a 50ml hand sanitiser costs about R14, while you can pay up to R300 for a 5-litre multipurpose sanitiser.

A first-aid surgical face mask costs between R10 and R20, while a more specialised mask can cost up to R600.

Despite the prices, manufacturers are unable to keep up with demand.

South African company U-Mask, which donated 30000 of its premium N95 face masks to the Chinese government to help curb the spread of Covid-19, now says it has back orders in the hundreds of millions.

South Africa also pledged 800000 N95 respiratory masks to Italy, further hampering the country’s supply to its own population now.

Since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak, demand for surgical masks has seen a six-fold increase, demand for N95 respirators has trebled and has doubled for gowns.

Meanwhile, Facebook has announced that it will further attempt to limit coronavirus-related chaos on its platform by banning commerce listings and advertisements for medical face masks, as price gouging is set to continue globally.

Some people on social media have taken advantage of the shortage by selling hand sanitiser at marked-up prices. A woman from uMhlanga advertised D-Germ hand sanitiser for R150, priced at under R70 at Dischem.

The Mercury contacted Clicks and Dischem stores in Durban to find out if they had hand sanitiser, face masks and wet wipes, and some did.

Dischem Gateway said they had no stock of any the items and could not confirm when they would receive new stock. The Pavilion branch indicated that they had stock of face masks and a specific brand of hand sanitiser, of which the store had decided to limit the number per customer.

Clicks Pavilion received stock of hand sanitiser on Monday and could not indicate when they would receive more masks. Clicks at the Workshop had no hand sanitiser or masks but did have wet wipes

On Monday during a Covid-19 inter-ministerial briefing, Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize said the department was aware of panic buying.

He said people should not feel they had lost out if they could not find hand sanitiser. “What is critical is just soap and water. It is standard, safer and more available,” he said.

Following the first confirmed Covid-19 case in South Africa, Clicks announced that they would freeze all prices on hygiene products. Rachel Wrigglesworth, the chief commercial officer of Clicks, said they had seen an increase in sales of hygiene products.

“We’re working hard to meet the surge in demand and are putting in place additional measures to ensure shelves are restocked as quickly as possible,” she said.

As part of its preparedness, Clicks has introduced daily training of store staff and pharmacy managers on general virus awareness and hygiene.

“We’ll be placing trolley wipes and hand sanitisers at the front of stores and in the pharmacy for customers. We have also increased the cleaning frequency of our stores, and are encouraging staff to wash hands more regularly,” said Wrigglesworth.

The Mercury

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